Grow lamb's lettuce in your own garden: we present suitable varieties and give tips and tricks from sowing, care and fertilization to harvesting.
Most is the common one Lamb's lettuce (Valerianella locusta) just a term as lamb's lettuce. However, there are many more names, such as Rapunzel, lard herb, field lettuce, lamb's lettuce or nut lettuce. Lamb's lettuce is a popular leaf lettuce, especially during the winter. The exquisite taste is accompanied by some lamb's lettuce varieties with a wonderful, very pleasantly nutty aroma.
This fine lettuce variety is native to central and southern Europe, but also to areas in North Africa and western Asia. During the 19 In the 19th century, people discovered the benefits of lamb's lettuce, which is so popular today. Before that time, it was only known as a wild herb on arable land. Its name, field lettuce, comes from this time, because at that time it grew weed-like in fields. Cultivation in German gardens is highly recommended. A greenhouse offers a good opportunity, because the gardener can harvest fresh lamb's lettuce all winter long.
The best lamb's lettuce varieties
There are various lamb's lettuce varieties, which are recommended for cultivation in the home garden or in the greenhouse. You can order seeds or plants online or purchase them from your trusted garden center. Here we have summarized a few popular ones:
- accent: Uniform, rapid growth; grows upright.
- Amely: Extremely fast-growing variety with rounded, deep green foliage; high yield.
- Baron: Fast-growing variety; cultivation in open ground or greenhouse; good yield.
- cirilla: Beautiful rosettes and glossy deep green leaves; high yield and good tolerance to powdery and downy mildew.
- D'Olanda A Seme Grosso: Traditional Italian variety; fast growing; long and thick leaves; very aromatic and delicate.
- Dark Green Wholehearted: Proven variety with small, rounded leaves; slow growth but robust.
- panache: High Yield; elongated leaves; Tolerance to downy mildew.
- Etampes: Traditional variety with very deep green leaves.
- favour: Good optics; can be grown all year round; robust against downy mildew.
- Gala: New breed with high yield; cultivation in open ground and greenhouse; large, long leaves; Tolerance to downy mildew.
- Dutch Broadleaf: Popular strain for outdoor cultivation.
- Verte de Cambrai: Small and deep green leaves with a pronounced rosette.
- full hard 3: Fast growing variety with pretty rosettes.
Growing lamb's lettuce: step-by-step
- Lamb's lettuce is not very demanding, but the soil should be fresh and rich in nutrients. To achieve this, you can treat the soil with a nutrient-rich vegetable soil such as our peat-free Plantura Organic tomato & vegetable soil improve.
- Depending on the variety, sowing can take place from the beginning of August to mid-September, but also as early as the beginning of March. Fresh lamb's lettuce from our own garden is available almost all year round!
- The seed should be pressed about 1 cm deep into the soil and a distance of about 2 cm between the individual grains is recommended. Sowing can also be done unevenly, but this can cause difficulties when weeding, and orderly planting is also more practical for harvesting.
- Depending on the outside temperature, the lamb's lettuce will start to germinate after about 2-3 weeks.
- Autumn is the main harvest time for lamb's lettuce, but during a mild winter you can harvest in the greenhouse well into March. Please remember to cover the plants with sufficient fleece or foil over the winter.
- If you don't harvest the inner leaves, the lamb's lettuce will sprout again in the spring. Be sure to harvest before flowering!
Important tip: Please only harvest what you need because lamb's lettuce cannot be stored for very long.
The winter purslane or postelein can also be harvested very early in the year. Everything about the unknown vegetable can be found in our special article Postelein.
